Demolition league table

Each Year Construction Europe's sister magazine, Demolition & Recycling International (D&Ri) complies a league table of the world's largest demolition contractors, based on sales in US Dollars. While the top of this league table – the D&Ri 100 – is inevitably dominated by US companies, Europeans are well represented.

Those Europeans that featured in last year's ranking, almost without exception, reported increased sales results for 2006 against 2005, proving that the demolition and recycling sector in Europe is currently a buoyant one.

Total revenues for all 100 companies in this year's D&Ri 100 came to US$ 3,7 billion (€ 2,8 billion), up almost +35% on last year's equivalent figure of US$ 2,7 billion (€ 2,05 billion). Some 56 European contractors made it onto this year's top 100, contributing US$ 1,86 billion (€ 1,41 billion) to the total. This contribution equates to just over 50% of all 100 companies, up from last year's contribution of 39,6%, or € 811 million.

Global Comparison

Looking at the D&Ri 100 as a whole illustrates the fragmented nature of the industry. With the exception of a handful of very large contractors, most players in the industry are relatively small companies operating in confined geographic regions. With total sales of US$ 3,7 billion (€ 2,8 billion), the average size of contractors in the list is just € 28 million in annual sales.

More to the point the top 50 contractors in the list contributed just over US$ 3 billion (€ 2,3 billion), or just over 81% of the total, and the top 10 contributed a huge US$ 1,24 billion (€ 940 million) or 34% of the total. In contrast, the companies ranked 51 to 100 had total sales of just US$ 695 million (€ 528 million) – just 19% of the total, and they had average annual sales of just over € 10 million per company.